2 out of 5

I like Rich Hedden and Tom McWeeney’s art in theory – a blend of comix and classic cartoons, with an extra edge of nutiness – but in practice, despite some fun characterizations, their page layouts are a mess, with reading order falling all over the place and their lettering adding to the confusion by criss-crossing panel borders and betraying left-right-up-down order on a whim.  In Phillip Nutman’s ‘Yo-Ho-Ho! and a bottle of Mutagen!’ evil scientist / mad pirate story, this artistic exuberance  isn’t assisted by a wandering, exhaustive narrative, which just reads like pagecount filler; not a TMNT story in any way.  Toxic Waste dumping is the target, I guess, but it just ends up being about two badguys yelling a lot.  Shortened down to regular length, it’d probably be an okay distraction (featuring the Turtles), but for all of its volume, a lack of focus and poor reader flow makes it hard to get in to.

John Gentile and Michael Gaydos are left to fill up an odd ten or so pages with the first part of The Darkest Hour.  Gaydos’ heavy line is interesting (and inked by Dan Berger he kinda amusingly draws like Dan Berger), but the story is structured around a contest – write in and guess the riddle solution! – that makes the setup and cliffhanger pause very forced.